420 Case of HijdrophoUa cured in India ly Bleedirtg. 



before a single particle of medicine of any kind had been 

 given, permancntlv extinguished the morbid condition, 

 whatever it may be, in which the essence of the disease 

 consists. 



These two points, therefore, appear to be fully proved ; 

 namely, that the disease was hydrophobia, and that the cnre 

 consisted in bl(<c.d-Utting alone. 



But notwithstanding this unprecedented success, I arh 

 not so sanguine as to believe that venesection will cure 

 every ca>e of hydrophobia. It is probable that there is a 

 period in the disease beyond which its curative effect can- 

 not extend. What that period is, cannot be known Vvith- 

 out a more enlarged experience. But this very uncertainty 

 affords only a more powerful reason for losing no time in 

 resorting to the copious abstraction of blood, upon the very 

 first appearance of unequivocal symptoms of the disease, as 

 the delay of only a few hours may prove fatal to the pa- 

 tient. 



In referring to notes which I have preserved of fourteen 

 cases of hydrophobia, I find that eisi,ht of the patients died 

 within six hours after admission, In these Icannot believe that 

 bleeding would have done any good. But of the remaining 

 six, who lived respectively 11, 13, 15, 20, 36, and 49 hours 

 after admission, it is certainly reasonable to believe that it 

 might have saved three or four. In a case so entirely hope- 

 less, however, there could scarcely be harm to the indivi- 

 dual, from trying it at any period of the disease. And as 

 it is only by such trials that the real limits of its power can 

 ever be ascertained to any u?eful purpose, it is rather de- 

 sirable than otherwise that they should be made. One dis- 

 advantatre however, eventuallv arising from such trials, re- 

 quires to be guarded as^iainst. The medical profession, 

 taught by innumerable disappointments, admit very cau- 

 tiously the claims of any new mode of practice to general 

 adoption. If several patients in hydrophobia, therefore, 

 should happen to be bled in an advanced stage of the dis- 

 ease, and die. — as they inevitably would do whether they 

 had been bled or not, — such cases would be quoted against 

 the new practice as fiilures, and mi<iht tend so far to bring 

 the remedy into di>ciedit, as to prevent its being used even 

 in cases where it might have proved the certain means of 

 saving life. 



I am the more desirous of noticing the unfavourable effect 

 upon the adop'ion of the new pactice, which may eventually 

 arise from bkelii'g at too late a period of the disease, and 

 of entering a strong caution against the hasty rejection of 



the 



